Poking around the cellar for my annual Christmas day barleywine. Think this one is ready or nah?

Oh man, we just tapped an old keg of Kentucky Quad and it's fucking good! Take the Skytrain. 14.1%

Me, 11 months of the year: Do I want sweetened, spiced milk? What, are you high? That's disgusting.

I open my blinds to look at the solstice. The rhododendron outside my window is quivering in the wind, like it's shivering from cold. I feel ya rhodo, I say, and shut the blinds. Nothing to see out there. I'll check again in March.

If you wanted a life full of nicely-wrapped presents, you should have married someone who is patient and cares about such things.

Last day of school for 2025. I just played School's Out by Alice Cooper for my kids. It's not summer, but they appreciated it nonetheless.

It is good to alternate between lagers and estery Belgian ales. Each makes the other taste better by contrast. After a lager, the esters in Burnabarian sing. After an imperial stout with cherries and brettanomyces, boy does that lager taste clean and crisp.

So we learned about this new kind of packaging, called "aluminum cans". They're basically neckless bottles, but much lighter and cheaper. I think it's a fad. I'm sure we'll be back to glass in a year or two, shaking our heads and wondering what the fuss was, but for now, this is what we're doing.

Dageraad Brewing is located pretty much in the geographic centre of metro vancouver, but you'd never know it by how often we get power outages. A cabin on a mountaintop in Northern BC has a more stable connection to the grid than us. What, did you just string the wires up in the treetops, BC Hydro?

and another thing that's wrong with you is that you don't respond well to negative feedback

Dageraad is world famous In my inbox this morning were an interview request from the Gazet van Zurenborg, a community newspaper from the neighbourhood of Antwerp where the Dageraadplaats is, and an email from a brewer from Japan, who is in Vancouver and wants to see the brewery. A big yes to both!

Lars argues that there are three kinds of beer, and no, lager and ale are not two of the divisions. An interesting perspective.

A dad-like joke I have built into my brain to the point where it's almost a nervous tic: Anytime anyone says so-and-so is being hard on someone, I reflexively say, "we say erection". They're already ruined! She is so hard on her shoes! We don't use those words. We say she is "erection" her shoes.

The trouble with buying groceries online: my wife thinking, yeah, 10kg sounds like a reasonable amount of red lentils. It is a fucking LIFETIME SUPPLY! We're never going to eat them all, and if we try, we'll never stop pooping. Anyone wants a kilo of lentils, hit my DMs.

Gonna prop a dead tree up in my living room and leave it there for about 1/12th of a year.

There's no need for FOMO about our 12 Dags Christmas box... Unless what you're afraid of is missing out, then you should totally be afraid. It's been on the webstore for two days and available in the tasting room for 18 minutes and we're already about 1/3 of the way through our stock

Pulling back the curtain to show how Dageraad's Christmas is made. Don't worry, Bray's photos will look much better.

This is huge news in the brewing world. I guess it makes sense. An institution that educates brewers from all over the world needs to be located in a liberal democracy, a country that is open to the world. The Siebel Institute is relocating from Chicago to Montreal. www.ctvnews.ca/business/art...

I just tasted a bunch of the special holiday beers we're releasing on Thursday. It might be the beer talking, but I love beer. What a bunch of stunners. My favourite might be the Entropy No. 38: Cherry Blonde. It's amazing how spicy the balaton cherries are.

Sartre was right, hell is other people. Specifically, it is two hyper nine year-olds in a small house on a rainy day. L'enfer, c'est deux enfants de neuf ans dans une petite maison un jour de pluie. - J.P. Sartre, probably, if he had twins

I'm so lucky that I have a job where I regularly use the words pallet (in the warehouse), palate (tasting beer) and palette (in label design). And I know how to spell them all, too.

It's been a few years since this handsome lad was seen around here

Witness my loud stoicism!

I found a great cauliflower mushroom in the forest today, one of my favourite kinds of mushrooms. I was as thrilled as if I'd found a diamond ring in the gutter. I might be hooked on this mushroom hunting thing. Also, Dageraad won a gold and a bronze medal at the Canada Beer Cup. A very good day.

Why did Main and 7th win the title of Worst Intersection in Metro Vancouver? @nicthedoor.bsky.social explains the problems with this intersection... and maybe how we can fix it? 👀 youtu.be/XgSjL7e7_ow?...

Every time you have had a crush on a politician they were either principled and unable to do the things they said they'd do, or they were practical and did what they could, but the compromises they had to make left you deeply embittered. But this time's going to be different!

We've lost a few breweries in BC in the last few years, but it's nothing compared to what's happening in the US. I just saw an auction for a brewing system in Chicago with a capacity of 600,000 bbl/year. That's got to be close to the capacity of every craft brewery in Metro Vancouver put together.

I'm just reflecting on how this isn't bike infrastructure. Bike infrastructure would be a pedestrian/cyclist activated signal. This is for the cars, so they don't have to stop when a cyclist wants to cross the nearly impenetrable barrier of the highway. Anyway, I'm glad to have it.

Burnaby's new bike/ped bridge is getting swung out over highway 1 on Saturday night!

Daylight savings ends and cue the hand wringing. BC has already passed legislation that says we'll stop changing our clocks if the US west coast also does. The US can't agree to adopt the fucking METRIC SYSTEM. They're never going to change! We're stuck with it forever!

I hope everyone enjoyed their bonus hour last night. I spent mine staying up too late and drinking a beer while watching the beginning of an old movie I had no intention of finishing, and I still got enough sleep and woke up at a reasonable time. And I won't have to pay for it until spring!

Right now I need to see a 10000 word piece from Rolling Stone in the 1970s by a celebrated American novelist about how they passionately hate baseball and have done so from a very young age, growing up in America's heartland

STIFF UPPER BISCUIT Look at these beauties! Just come down to Dageraad and ask for a Stiffy — they'll know what you're after.

Is it okay if I haven't watched a second of the World Series because for me baseball is like watching paint dry but with more spitting, but I still want the Blue Jays to win because I don't want Americans to win anything right now (even if the Blue Jays players are almost all American)?

"Two heads are better than one!" - An old saying in my family about cooking with garlic

2024 10° (bottled 21 months ago) and a wood fire. I am having a day today! This beer is ridiculous. And I'm not just saying that because I designed the recipe and own the brewery where it was brewed.

West coast late October vibes.

Dart. It's not just good, it's pretty good. For drinking.

Having a good night

Your BC Liquor Store is closed, but your local brewery is still open!

If you ever wondered where Antwerpen gets it's wonderful, subtle floral notes from... I'm brewing it today. You'll see it in a couple of months.

Heard a song I'd never heard before and I was excited that I liked it. But it turns out It was from 2008, by a band I liked back then but I somehow missed the album. Figures. I'm speeding toward 50 and I like practically nothing that was recorded after 2010. I'm a grumpy old fucker.

This brewery closure is hitting me hard. Upright was one of the US breweries that inspired me to open Dageraad. Alex is an incredible brewer and I was lucky enough to have brewed two collabs with him. He taught us a ton and inspired a lot of our spiced beers. I'm mourning a brewery and an era.

This bank is nearly lined up out the door, but only because people are acting like it's still the social distancing days of 2020. There are only five of us, guys. Cuddle up a little so I can get in the front door.

Founder Alex Ganum is one of a handful of the most gifted brewers I’ve encountered in my travels around the world, and on a number of occasions, tasting his beer left me startled by its originality and accomplishment. With its singular vision and personality, Upright was an irreplaceable brewery.

On tap: Stiff Upper Biscuit, our collaboration with Blind Enthusiasm from Edmonton. It's an English-style pub ale that we're pouring on a creamer faucet. It's a staged pour, so it takes about four minutes to pour, but this creamy boy is worth the wait.

Some things I've learned that applies to cycling and business (and maybe life in general): You seldom notice when you have a tailwind. You tend to take credit for how awesome you are. When it turns into a headwind, you blame it for everything wrong. And:

Sauing goodbye to Another Beer Co. They're going out with the same sense of humour they always operated with. Their closing party is this weekend. Don't miss it.

Bursitis. WTF. How can a piece of anatomy I didn't even know existed get inflamed? If there's part of my body that I haven't noticed by now, I'm sure I don't need it. I've been living in this dump for 48 years and never once have I thought, "now I'll use my fluid-filled sacs, called bursae"